Nine stuffed characters, all different are placed along a baby’s toy shelf. How many possible arrangements are there if Cookie Monster must be in the middle

Answer 1

In this case, Cookie Monster must be in the middle of the shelf.

To solve this, we can consider the two sections of the shelf: left and right of Cookie Monster.

The left section can have 4 different characters (since Cookie Monster is already placed), and the right section can also have 4 different characters (since all characters are different).

Therefore, the total number of possible arrangements would be 4 choices for the left section × 1 choice for the middle (since Cookie Monster is fixed in the middle) × 4 choices for the right section.

Thus, there would be 4 × 1 × 4 = 16 possible arrangements.